New: Objectives Based Display Campaign Set-Up

Some of you may have noticed a new display campaign set-up functionality in AdWords. This functionality has only rolled out to a subset of advertisers and isn’t yet documented in the AdWords help section, making the details around this new set-up pretty vague.  We’ve reached out to AdWords for clarification but, in the meantime, we’ve done some sleuthing ourselves.  Hopefully our notes will help you to understand how the different steps relate to each campaign sub-type, so that you can quickly and easily set up new campaigns without missing a beat.

Display Network Only: Marketing Objectives

The new set-up allows advertisers to set up display campaigns based upon their goals, in order to help them determine the best tactics for their needs.  On the flip side, it’s a bit vague as to what tactics each selection will include. That said, as we all become familiar with this new step, I’m sure it will become second nature. It always does!

You have four core “objectives” to choose from when setting up a new campaign through the updated sub-type.  Here’s how Google describes them:

  • Build awareness amongst people who may not have heard of your brand before or whose perception you want to influence.
  • Influence consideration with people who are researching a product or service but haven’t yet made a purchasing decision.
  • Drive action or sales with people who want your product or service and are ready to become customers or subscribers.
  • Grow loyalty with past customers or subscribers who want to get more from you.

Here’s a screen grab of what the new set up looks like:

AdWords Display Objectives

For reference, here’s a screen grab of what the “old” setting looked like:

old_display_set-up

Objectives and Settings

Just as you may have imagined, objectives are factored into the features and settings for each campaign. Many of them align directly with the campaigns sub-types that can be selected using the radio buttons in the old set-up functionality. Below is a quick rundown of settings for each objective, at a glance. Note: even within the same objective, settings differ depending on which specific sub-objectives you have selected.

Build Awareness Objective

  • Bid Strategy: defaults to manual CPC with enhanced CPC enabled but offers the option to switch to auto-bidding, CPM, Conversion Optimizer or Flexible bid strategy settings.
  • Ad Rotation: defaults to optimize for clicks with the option to change to optimize for conversions, rotate evenly or rotate indefinitely.
  • Ad Extensions: location and call extensions are available.
  • Delivery Method: defaults to standard but accelerated is available.
  • Ad Scheduling: ad scheduling is available per usual.
  • Dynamic Ad Settings: dynamic ads are available.

Influence Consideration “Engage With Content” (Typical Engagement Campaign)

  • Bid Strategy: offers no other options outside of manual CPE.
  • Ad Rotation: defaults to optimize for engagements with the option to change to optimize for conversions, rotate evenly or rotate indefinitely.
  • Ad Extensions: location and call extensions are available.
  • Delivery Method: defaults to standard but accelerated is available.
  • Ad Scheduling: ad scheduling is available per usual.
  • Dynamic Ad Settings: dynamic ads are not available.

Influence Consideration “Visit Your Website”

  • Bid Strategy: defaults to manual CPC with enhanced CPC enabled but offers the option to switch to auto-bidding, CPM, Conversion Optimizer or Flexible bid strategy settings.
  • Ad Rotation: defaults to optimize for clicks with the option to change to optimize for conversions, rotate evenly or rotate indefinitely.
  • Ad Extensions: location and call extensions are available.
  • Delivery Method: defaults to standard but accelerated is available.
  • Ad Scheduling: ad scheduling is available per usual.
  • Dynamic Ad Settings: dynamic ads are available.

Drive Action “Buy on Your Website” (Includes Remarketing), “Call Your Business” and/or “Visit Your Business”

  • Bid Strategy: defaults to manual CPC with enhanced CPC enabled but offers the option to switch to auto-bidding, CPM, Conversion Optimizer or Flexible bid strategy settings.
  • Ad Rotation: defaults to optimize for clicks with the option to change to optimize for conversions, rotate evenly or rotate indefinitely.
  • Ad Extensions: location and call extensions are available.
  • Delivery Method: defaults to standard but accelerated is available.
  • Ad Scheduling: ad scheduling is available per usual.
  • Dynamic Ad Settings: dynamic ads are available.

Drive Action “Install Your Mobile App” (Typical App-Install Settings)

  • Bid Strategy: defaults to manual CPC or Target CPA, based upon the selected app .
  • Ad Rotation: defaults to optimize for clicks with no other options.
  • Ad Extensions: none
  • Delivery Method: defaults to standard but accelerated is available.
  • Ad Scheduling: ad scheduling is available per usual.
  • Dynamic Ad Settings: dynamic ads are not available.

Drive Action “Install Your Mobile App” (Typical App-Engagement Settings)

  • Bid Strategy: defaults to “focus on clicks” using manual CPC with the opportunity to qualify for conversion optimizer aka “Focus on installs” with CPA bids
  • Ad Rotation: defaults to optimize for clicks with no other options.
  • Ad Extensions: none
  • Delivery Method: defaults to standard but accelerated is available.
  • Ad Scheduling: ad scheduling is available per usual.
  • Dynamic Ad Settings: dynamic ads are not available.

Selecting Your Marketing Objective:

In playing around with the new set-up options, I’ve made a few preliminarly observations about selecting your marketing objectives:

  1. You can only select options from one objective. For instance, if you select “See your ad” within the Build Awareness Objective, you cannot select options from any other objectives.
  2. You cannot select multiple options if they are separated with a grey dotted line. For instance, within the “Drive Action” objective, you can select all three “Buy on your website”, “call your business” and “visit your business”. However, you cannot select “Install Your Mobile App” in addition to the other three options even though they are all categorized within the “Drive Action” objective.
AdWords Display Objective

You may only select options from one “Objective” category. You cannot select options above and below the dotted line, even within the same category.

Display Network Only: No Marketing Objectives

Advertisers are still capable of choosing “Display Network Only: All Features” or “Display Network Only: Ads in Mobile Apps” by selecting “No Marketing Objective” and then choosing the appropriate campaign.

Display Network No Objective

 

As I mentioned before, the details around the campaigns are still vague but I hope this post has helped to shed some light.  We will post updates as we learn more. We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below! Are you seeing this functionality in your accounts?